We've traveled 6 days, from Oakland, CA to St. Cloud, MN. This morning we are driving into the sun towards a VW mechanic in Minneapolis. There seems to be some unwritten law of trips that a little ways past the mid-point, things become the most difficult. We remembered this yesterday and took comfort in the idea that this bump in the road was just that: a bump, not a long steep hill we'd never see the other side of (read: we are still getting to Maine in time to earn the well-earned name leaf peeper - and who wouldn't want to call themselves by such a ridiculously cute name!?).
The van has developed what appears to be an oil cooler seal leak, which can apparently get suddenly worse without warning (read: lose all your oil at once while driving). Adam determined this problem while we adjusted to the morning light in the Wal-Mart parking lot of Bismarck, North Dakota with some commiseration and guidance from our friend Hans and our mechanic back in Santa Cruz, Peter at Volks Cafe. Adam has been keeping an eye on a small transmission fluid leak since we left. Seeing oil spattered all over the pod and back hatch of the van gave us some alarm about the transmission, but it turned out to be motor oil. Since North Dakota is not known for its VW mechanics (I don't remember seeing one VW on the 94 in this state), we opted to limp a little bit (keeping the engine below 3400 rpm) the 420 miles to Minneapolis, where we were headed to visit my gramma.
As we drove pulled up at a stoplight in Fargo, two burly blond guys in a ford pulled up a long side us, elbows and toothy grins hanging out the window.
"Cal-i-FOR-nia!" one exclaimed in high-pitched drawl.
Imagine the stereotypical bumpkin accent. Now exaggerate it as if you were on South Park. But this was for real.
Adam and I just looked at each other in amazement.
"Did that just happen?"
"I think he was exaggerating..."
"No, I don't think so!"
We became giddy with laughter, incredulous.
Somehow, 400 miles of highway 94 took us 12 hours. We left Bismarck at 1 pm and arrived, extremely tired and about as irritable as possible, at 1 am in the Wal-Mart parking lot of St. Cloud. How did you average only 33 miles per hour?!, you ask.
Well, it could have been the extra 80 miles and 90 minutes we drove because I left my purse at the fabulous restaurant where we had a scrumptious, slow food movement dinner in Fargo. The dinner was worth the 90 minutes (mouthwatering fig-glazed pork chop and spring vegetables, the fluffiest, most tangy-sweet cheesecake I've ever tasted, delicious roast chicken, chocolate mouse that hits your tongue like a knee-weakening kiss...), but going back for my purse was most certainly NOT. Perhaps it was because we had to stop every 60 miles to check the oil level. Perhaps it was the fact that we were traveling about 25 mph slower than we have been. This all adds up fast.
Luckily, the shop where we're headed this fine bright morning is called Good Carma. And, our befuddled timing in arriving in the Twin Cities means I get to see my gramma a little bit longer than I thought I would.
Friday, September 30, 2005
Monday, September 26, 2005
Back on the Road & Biodiversity
It's day three of our first drive across the country: Oakland, Ca to Rockland, Maine. The first night we stayed in Ashland and had a sweet (though short) visit with my mom. Last night we stayed with our friend Monica in Portland, OR - another place we want to stay longer, but the leaves on the East Coast (and the thought of living in snow shortly after rolling in) call us quickly to the home our friends Kevin and Kelly and their daugher Raelin, on the coast of Maine.
We are now driving through Columbia River Gorge. It's magnificent. I think Adam has exclaimed, "It's sooo beautiful!" about 10 times in the last 90 minutes. The river is gigantic and seems to want to be a lake. The sun shines down on the valley from a cloudless blue sky, illuminating the blue and green ripples on either side of us, the freight trains moving East at half our speed, the gold hills that remind me of California, and the brown crags and humps of cliffs round every curve on 84 East.
I am thrilled to be back on the road again! An intangible quality comes over me and creates this look on my face, or so I imagine from the inside, that says: I am on an awesome adventure and drinking in every moment; I am both thirsty for what's to come, and satiated right now.
This predominant feeling doesn't permeate every waking moment - it's more of a home base that I keep coming back to, like every morning as we drive off toward a new place. There is of course, the usual share of stressed out, irritable moments, like when Adam and I are navigating via GPS through an unfamiliar city, or when we're sleepy in the afternoon and don't feel like driving or finding a place to eat, or rummagin through the cooler, or making any decisions.
Our first 6 weeks of this trip, from the Russian River where we spent Adam's birthday, to Saline Valley with Emily, to the 4 corners with the Santa Barbara Middle School and friends new and old, was much more challenging. The feeling of freedom and adventure was far more ephemeral. We've traversed the difficult part of getting and being on the road: figuring out whether it would really work, and the constant wondering and worrying about whether we had made the right decision, and why things kept breaking, etc. This new setting out - Part 3 of our Road Trip - is shaping up to be more enjoyable, with a distinct sense of the place where our control ends.
This conversation has happened in some form or another a few times in the last week:
"I'm thinking we shouldn't be driving across the country right now..."
"You think we should fly there last minute?"
"I don't know...maybe we should just stay here for a while."
"But who's to say how long gas prices will be high? We could be here for a long time if that's our criteria..."
"Yeah...that's true...hmmm..."
"I think we should just go and see what happens."
"Okay."
I find myself less attached to plans we have made, more aware of the constant possibility that conditions could change and that new decisions might be necessary or at least worth considering. This is a big deal for me - I usually hate to make a decision and then change it. And I usually hate to play things by ear for a long time. And I'm not too great at deliberating out loud with someone else, either. I always flounder around for some way to linearly determine which decision is better. I haven't found it. Sometimes I have no sense of which way to lean, and other times I have no choice but to follow a faint sense of intuition to go one way instead of the other, not knowing what unconscious thoughts lie beneath that vague pull.
Our nearly 3 months in Oakland were adventurous, no doubt: I got two temp jobs in the city and experienced my first serious commute (1 hour each way on public transportation), I started seeing a kinesiologist and am now temporarily eschewing a new list of foods, I joined a newly forming women's group, we had stuff stolen out of our van, then our van was stolen in the wee hours of the night, then we got a call from a neighbor who found most of our stuff in his recovered vehicle, then we found our van 3 blocks from the house we were living, then we went to Burning Man (deciding 3 days prior that yes, we were actually going), then moved to a new place. We did not sit around twiddling our thumbs. Though there were times we wished that's what we were doing! Or at least oil thumb wrestling, which we invented in Durango while waiting for a scrumptious meal of free-range, locally raised chicken and lamb at the restaurant where we made friends with the wait staff and learned about zero-emissions research initiative, which sounds highly intriguing, though I haven't looked into it in depth.
I am still reveling in the new, incredible experience of having a community. I'm a little sad that we are leaving that community for at least a couple months, perhaps longer. I know that it will be there when we come back. The surge of support we received when our *house* was stolen reversed the experience from a huge bummer to a heartening lesson in faith. The many, many casual evenings or mornings or afternoons spent dining or dancing or standing in the doorway with friends shifted my sense of the world as a place in which Adam and I dwell alone and must figure out everything on our own to one filled with thoughtful, caring people with whom we can share our hearts and minds and laughs and tears. It's the difference between poverty and wealth. It's the difference between the scientific forests of Germany and a WW2 Victory Garden. That's a big difference.
Biodiversity, baby. Worth more than our sense of security.
We are now driving through Columbia River Gorge. It's magnificent. I think Adam has exclaimed, "It's sooo beautiful!" about 10 times in the last 90 minutes. The river is gigantic and seems to want to be a lake. The sun shines down on the valley from a cloudless blue sky, illuminating the blue and green ripples on either side of us, the freight trains moving East at half our speed, the gold hills that remind me of California, and the brown crags and humps of cliffs round every curve on 84 East.
I am thrilled to be back on the road again! An intangible quality comes over me and creates this look on my face, or so I imagine from the inside, that says: I am on an awesome adventure and drinking in every moment; I am both thirsty for what's to come, and satiated right now.
This predominant feeling doesn't permeate every waking moment - it's more of a home base that I keep coming back to, like every morning as we drive off toward a new place. There is of course, the usual share of stressed out, irritable moments, like when Adam and I are navigating via GPS through an unfamiliar city, or when we're sleepy in the afternoon and don't feel like driving or finding a place to eat, or rummagin through the cooler, or making any decisions.
Our first 6 weeks of this trip, from the Russian River where we spent Adam's birthday, to Saline Valley with Emily, to the 4 corners with the Santa Barbara Middle School and friends new and old, was much more challenging. The feeling of freedom and adventure was far more ephemeral. We've traversed the difficult part of getting and being on the road: figuring out whether it would really work, and the constant wondering and worrying about whether we had made the right decision, and why things kept breaking, etc. This new setting out - Part 3 of our Road Trip - is shaping up to be more enjoyable, with a distinct sense of the place where our control ends.
This conversation has happened in some form or another a few times in the last week:
"I'm thinking we shouldn't be driving across the country right now..."
"You think we should fly there last minute?"
"I don't know...maybe we should just stay here for a while."
"But who's to say how long gas prices will be high? We could be here for a long time if that's our criteria..."
"Yeah...that's true...hmmm..."
"I think we should just go and see what happens."
"Okay."
I find myself less attached to plans we have made, more aware of the constant possibility that conditions could change and that new decisions might be necessary or at least worth considering. This is a big deal for me - I usually hate to make a decision and then change it. And I usually hate to play things by ear for a long time. And I'm not too great at deliberating out loud with someone else, either. I always flounder around for some way to linearly determine which decision is better. I haven't found it. Sometimes I have no sense of which way to lean, and other times I have no choice but to follow a faint sense of intuition to go one way instead of the other, not knowing what unconscious thoughts lie beneath that vague pull.
Our nearly 3 months in Oakland were adventurous, no doubt: I got two temp jobs in the city and experienced my first serious commute (1 hour each way on public transportation), I started seeing a kinesiologist and am now temporarily eschewing a new list of foods, I joined a newly forming women's group, we had stuff stolen out of our van, then our van was stolen in the wee hours of the night, then we got a call from a neighbor who found most of our stuff in his recovered vehicle, then we found our van 3 blocks from the house we were living, then we went to Burning Man (deciding 3 days prior that yes, we were actually going), then moved to a new place. We did not sit around twiddling our thumbs. Though there were times we wished that's what we were doing! Or at least oil thumb wrestling, which we invented in Durango while waiting for a scrumptious meal of free-range, locally raised chicken and lamb at the restaurant where we made friends with the wait staff and learned about zero-emissions research initiative, which sounds highly intriguing, though I haven't looked into it in depth.
I am still reveling in the new, incredible experience of having a community. I'm a little sad that we are leaving that community for at least a couple months, perhaps longer. I know that it will be there when we come back. The surge of support we received when our *house* was stolen reversed the experience from a huge bummer to a heartening lesson in faith. The many, many casual evenings or mornings or afternoons spent dining or dancing or standing in the doorway with friends shifted my sense of the world as a place in which Adam and I dwell alone and must figure out everything on our own to one filled with thoughtful, caring people with whom we can share our hearts and minds and laughs and tears. It's the difference between poverty and wealth. It's the difference between the scientific forests of Germany and a WW2 Victory Garden. That's a big difference.
Biodiversity, baby. Worth more than our sense of security.
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